What Is a CNAPP? A Clear Guide for Security Teams

What Is a Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP)?

Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) is a single security platform that secures cloud-native applications throughout their lifecycle, from code to production runtime. This includes containers, microservices, and serverless functions.

CNAPP brings posture management, workload protection, and identity controls into a single integrated platform. It correlates misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and security signals to highlight the most exploitable risks, helping teams prioritize fixes and shorten remediation cycles with less alert noise.

The CNAPP market stood at approximately $10.90 billion in 2025 and is expected to reach $28.03 billion by 2030, expanding at a compound annual growth rate of 20.8%.

Why Is CNAPP Important?

CNAPP addresses three fundamental problems organizations face when securing cloud environments: visibility gaps, tool sprawl, and the inability to prioritize risk at scale.

1. Visibility gaps create blind spots that attackers exploit

Thousands of configuration signals are generated across infrastructures, identities, workloads, and data stores every minute in cloud environments. Security teams have no visibility into how these elements interact or where true exposure lies, without having a single view. 

According to research, 99% of cloud security failures occur not because of sophisticated attacks but due to misconfigurations. CNAPP solves this by providing:

• Single pane of glass across multi-cloud environments
• Discover assets and relations in real-time
• Mapping of configuration signals to expose attack paths
• Continuous monitoring that tracks changes as they happen

2. Tool sprawl creates alert fatigue and slows response

Traditional security models use point solutions that force organizations to deploy separate tools for each need, such as vulnerability scanning, posture management, workload protection, compliance monitoring, and identity governance. These tools work in isolation and generate alerts without any context.

CNAPP brings these capabilities together into a single platform:

• Holistic risk and security assessment across all security verticals
• Contextual analysis that cross-references findings across infrastructure
• Reduced alert volume through intelligent filtering
• Unified investigation and remediation interface

3. Cloud-native applications evolve faster than manual security can keep up

Every day, developers deploy infrastructure changes, container images, or code updates multiple times. Manual security reviews are not scalable at this pace. According to a 2025 research on cloud security challenges, 15% of breaches are traced back to cloud misconfigurations, and 82% of those misconfigurations stem from human error.

CNAPP embeds security into development workflows:

• Automated scanning of infrastructure-as-code before deployment.
• Policy enforcement in CI/CD pipelines.
• Immediate feedback to developers in their tools.
• Prevention of misconfigurations before they reach production.

How Does CNAPP Work?

CNAPP functions across four pillars that deliver continuous visibility and control, from code commit to production runtime.

1. Connect to cloud environments via API

The platform connects to cloud service providers using API-based connectors, creating visibility across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and other environments. Agent-based solutions require an agent to be installed on every workload, whereas most CNAPP offerings use agentless scanning. It reduces deployment friction and avoids coverage gaps.

2. Find and list every cloud asset 

When you first connect to CNAPP, it begins to inventory all cloud resources: VMs, containers, serverless functions, databases, storage buckets, identities, and network configurations. This continuous discovery process, which identifies and tracks changes as they happen, overcomes the limitations of static discovery solutions.

3. Assess configurations against security benchmarks

The platform assesses discovered assets against the organization’s security standards, compliance frameworks, and policies. This involves a range of processes, from checking for misconfigurations and vulnerabilities in workloads and container images to detecting risky identity permissions, insecure API endpoints, and exposed secrets. It correlates findings across infrastructure posture, runtime behavior, identity context, and data sensitivity, which goes beyond simple checklist validation.

4. Prioritize risks and guide remediation

Contextual risk analysis filters raw security findings to unearth high-impact scenarios. The SSVC (Stakeholder-Specific Vulnerability Categorization) score would be low for a publicly exposed storage bucket with test data, but a bucket with customer payment information configured the same way, with admin access from a compromised service account, would be a critical attack path.

This loop helps make sure security is as quick as cloud-native development. When new infrastructure is provisioned or code is deployed, a CNAPP checks it against established policies and either blocks risky changes or flags them for review, preventing delays that could impede innovation.

Key Components of a CNAPP

CNAPP consolidates several security technologies into a single platform. These components provide insights into how CNAPP provides integrated protection across the cloud stack.

1. Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

CSPM continuously scans the cloud infrastructure for misconfigurations and compliance violations. It compares the current configuration state with industry benchmarks (CIS, NIST, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA) and organizational policies to detect drift.

CSPM detects:

• Exposed resources (storage buckets set to public databases without encryption).
• Insecure network configurations (overly permissive security groups).
• Missing security controls (disabled logging, lack of multi-factor authentication).

Many teams begin with CSPM as their first cloud security solution and then mature to full CNAPP coverage over time. 

2. Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP)

CWPP secures workloads running in the cloud (virtual machines, containers, Kubernetes pods, and serverless functions). The platform provides runtime protection through threat detection, vulnerability management, and behavioral monitoring.

For containerized environments, CWPP provides:

• Image scanning for vulnerabilities and embedded secrets before deployment.
• Runtime policies to prevent container escape and privilege escalation.
• Monitoring of inter-container communications for anomalous behavior.

3. Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM)

Continuous Identity and Entitlement Management (CIEM) focuses on identity and access risk by searching for, analyzing, and governing permissions across cloud environments. The platform catalogs every identity, such as a human user, service account, role, API key, and all of the entitlements that it has.

CIEM identifies:

• Overly permissive roles and Unused credentials.
• Excessive permissions that violate least privilege.
• Risky access patterns that could indicate compromise.

4. Code-to-Cloud Security (DevSecOps)

CNAPP implements DevSecOps by integrating with source code repositories, CI/CD pipelines, and developer tools, embedding security into the development lifecycle. The platform provides:

• Infrastructure-as-code scanning: Evaluates Terraform, CloudFormation, and Kubernetes manifests for misconfigurations before deployment.
• Dependency scanning: Assesses container images and open-source libraries for known vulnerabilities.
• Pipeline integration: Enforces security policies as automated gates in build processes.

5. Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)

DSPM scans and identifies sensitive data residing in cloud data stores (databases, object storage, data lake, SaaS applications). The platform pinpoints locations of Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Payment Card Information (PCI), Intellectual Property (IP), and other sensitive data.

DSPM evaluates the security posture of those data stores:

• Encryption status.
• Access controls.
• Compliance with data protection regulations.

6. Cloud Detection and Response (CDR)

CDR provides runtime threat detection and incident response capabilities for your cloud environments. It analyzes cloud logs, network traffic, API calls, and behavioral signals to detect active threats in your environment.

CDR detects:

• Account compromise.
• Lateral movement and data exfiltration.
• Ransomware and Cryptomining.

Group-IB Managed XDR service enhances CNAPP deployments by providing 24/7 analyst oversight and expert-led threat hunting. When CNAPP surfaces a suspicious event (anomalous API activity, unexpected privilege escalation, or lateral movement attempts), our analysts will investigate whether it represents a real compromise before executing containment responses to stop attackers.

CNAPP Benefits and Use Cases

CNAPP provides tangible security and operational enhancements for organizations of any size. These benefits, including everything from unified visibility to automated compliance, span industries from financial services to e-commerce.

1. Consolidated visibility across multi-cloud environments

Multi-cloud environments, by their very nature, create many visibility gaps; however, a CNAPP eliminates these gaps by providing a single pane of glass across multiple clouds. Security teams can avoid the need to log in to separate consoles for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. This integrated perspective speeds up threat detection and reduces the time required to correlate results from various tools.

2. Risk-based prioritization and faster remediation

When CNAPP finds a misconfiguration, instead of presenting thousands of undifferentiated findings, CNAPP correlates what it has found with exposure, identities, workloads, and data sensitivity to surface attack paths.

CNAPP integrates security into developer workflows by assigning ownership to the appropriate teams when issues are found. Bringing shift-left security into workflows can boost app delivery for development teams. With CNAPP, you can scan IaC templates and container images directly in the CI/CD pipeline, catching issues early (well before deployment).

3. Compliance automation and continuous monitoring

CNAPP simplifies regulatory adherence through continuous monitoring and automated reporting. The platform continuously assesses infrastructure against PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOC 2, and GDPR requirements. Configuration drift is a major cause of compliance violations, and teams are notified in real time with alerts that replace frequent human audits with always-on validation.

CNAPP helps ensure compliance across rapidly evolving cloud environments, which is especially important for highly regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, and e-commerce. 

Getting Started With CNAPP

CNAPP should be introduced in multiple phases, progressively focusing on improving security posture while minimizing disruption to operations. High-impact capabilities should be prioritized by organizations, with coverage broadening over time as teams deepen experience and prove their value.

1. Map your current security landscape

Begin with a clear view of existing security capabilities and where they are lacking. This baseline assessment informs your CNAPP deployment strategy and helps to determine the initial focus areas.

Key steps:

• Document existing cloud security tools and identify overlaps or coverage gaps.
• Evaluate whether current tools integrate with each other or operate as isolated silos.
• Determine which cloud environments, workloads, and development workflows lack adequate security.

2. Define security policies and compliance requirements

Set clear security benchmarks before CNAPP setup to ensure the platform enforces the appropriate controls. Having clearly defined guidance allows CNAPP to assess risk and prioritize findings to the specific requirements of your business.

Required documentation:

• Acceptable configurations for infrastructure, identity permissions, and workload protection.
• Regulatory obligations (GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS) and industry benchmarks (CIS, NIST).
• Risk prioritization criteria that reflect actual business impact rather than generic severity scores.

3. Deploy CNAPP capabilities in phases

Start with CSPM to gain insight into misconfigurations and compliance violations in cloud infrastructure. This way, teams can see instant value without much need for full-scale integration into dev workflows, allowing them to demonstrate ROI fairly quickly.

Phased rollout:

• Start with CSPM for posture management and compliance monitoring.
• Expand to CWPP for runtime workload protection once posture is stabilized.
• Integrate DevSecOps capabilities into CI/CD pipelines to enable shift-left security.

4. Embed security into developer workflows

CNAPP works well when security is part of the edifice, not an appendage. Security tooling in developers’ workflows must feel natural and provide actionable guidance without adding any friction.

Integration strategies:

• Provide security feedback through IDE plugins, pull request annotations, and Slack notifications.
• Provide clear remediation steps that developers can implement without involving the security team.
• Prioritize findings based on exploitability and business context rather than overwhelming teams with noise.

5. Automate remediation and measure outcomes

Automate common, low-risk misconfiguration fixes while retaining human intervention for anything that could affect availability. Track metrics that show real security improvements.

Focus areas:

• Automate remediation for issues like exposed storage buckets, disabled logging, and missing encryption.
• Use policy-as-code frameworks to prevent configuration drift through continuous enforcement.
• Measure the mean time to remediate critical risks, compliance coverage, and the reduction in production incidents.

How Group-IB Strengthens Your Cloud Security Program

Enterprises need CNAPP because cloud risk touches every step of the process, from bad settings and too many user accounts to vulnerabilities in workloads and risky changes made by fast-moving development teams. With CNAPP, your security and cloud teams can actually see what’s happening, fix problems faster, and stay ready for new threats. 

Once cloud security becomes continuous, teams need more than another list of misconfigurations. They need context that explains what’s being targeted and what to do next. Group-IB Cloud Security Posture Management solution helps teams focus on exploitable exposures in real-world attack paths by adding context and prioritization. It:

• Validates exposure using Group-IB Attack Surface Management and live threat intelligence, allowing you to link misconfigurations to real attacker activity and prioritize critical vulnerabilities.
• Combines an inside view of your cloud posture with an outside view of what’s exposed on the internet. 
• Enriches visibility and risk prioritization and closes the loop between internal compliance posture and external attack-surface intelligence.

When CNAPP identifies suspicious access patterns or privilege escalation attempts, Managed XDR analysts correlate these events with endpoint telemetry, network traffic, and threat intelligence to determine whether they represent active attacks. 

Contact Group-IB experts today to learn how you can reduce cloud exposure and accelerate response.